THIS INVENTION relates to a tag and a method of securing it to an object. In particular, the invention concerns a tag which may be applied to an object such as meat products, hides and skins, and other articles.
The invention will be described by way of example with reference to the application of the tag to skins and hides. It should be appreciated that this is by way of example only, and that the tag of the invention may also be applied to other articles.
In the processing of animal carcasses in abattoirs, there is a need for identifying the particular carcass from which skin or hide originates Such identification allows for quality assurance procedures to be implemented and for products such as hides to be sold at their true value. In addition, during the course of slaughtering animals, it is often necessary to be able to accurately determine the particular carcass from which cuts of meat originate. This is also desirable from the point of view of quality assurance procedures.
It has become the practice to label cuts of meat or hides with labels or tags carrying indicia such as bar codes or the like. These labels were either pre-printed, or printed on site. Typically, these labels were secured to the cut of meat or hide by first cutting the meat or the hide and then attaching the label with a loop extending through the cut and as a consequence, the loop which secures the label in place, is accessible from one or other or both sides of the cut of meat or hide. The incision in the cut of meat or hide was usually made by one person and another person would be responsible for attaching the label and it was often difficult for that person to locate the incision previously made.
The labels employed typically consisted of a thin plastic tag inserted into and extending through the cut of meat or hide and in some instances, rather than being attached as described above, were secured to the cut of meat or hide by employing a needle gun. If these tags were not completely removed from the cut of meat, portions of the tag often remained in the meat product and this could cause problems for the consumer.
Where the tags were secured to skins or hides while the skin was still green or unprocessed, it was necessary to remove the tag to allow the hide to be defleshed to remove the flesh remaining on the hide before the hide could be further processed. This defleshing operation uses rotating roller blades to remove flesh and fat from the hide and if the tag was not removed before this process was carried out, the fleshing process would sever the tag from the hide. In any event, after the fleshing operation, tags would need to be re-secured to the hide, so that each hide could readily be identified with a particular carcass.
The tags or labels were typically made from a variety of materials including paper, woven cloth, thin sheets of plastic, or thin sheets of gelatin or collagen.